Edinburgh is heaving. I've just bumped into some muscular Asians with enormous banners for a samurai dance-off. Various puggle-heads are leaping around with wigs, painted faces and flyers aplenty. The Royal Mile is like Venice Beach midsummer - a motley crew of freaks desperate to please - and it's hard not to arrive home with a fist full of paper and a sweaty, uncomfortable feeling. Edinburgh locals are famous for hating the Festival but this year with 'go-reborn' in full swing it has taken on a new and memorable sheen.
Day 2 of the blog and I want to give you some of the history behind the 'go reborn' name. I was hanging out with my nemesis AwareInjustice watching a favourite film, The Misfits with Marilyn Monroe (in her 'dark' film, and final role), Clark Gable also in his final role, and the beautiful Montgomery Clift. The film's screenplay is by Monroe's husband Arthur Miller, and it is directed by legend John Huston. It tells of Monroe's decision to leave her boyfriend ("If I'm going to be by myself I'd rather be on my own") and go on a film-long bender with first Gable and then later joined by Clift surrounded by a majestic all-American landscape.
These three are the misfits of the title and all of us at 'go reborn' identify with that desire to search for something better, something bigger, something freer and something MORE. The Misfits embark on a wild journey of discovery and love and desire via honky drinking holes, hardcore rodeo blood fests and a final, heart-wrenching wrangling scene in a moonlit desert in Nevada.
At one point during the film, Marilyn is flushed and drunk after a heroic and hilarious ping-pong bet she wins means she has a bra-full of dollars. A weasel-faced religious woman stalks her, muttering oaths and demanding money in the name of God. Despite Gable's desire to keep all of those damn dollars Monroe in her happy frenzy slips the ratty nun a ton and with a pious glance she dismissed our Misfits with these immortal words: "Go reborn!"
And go reborn they do, into the starry, mental night, with only a lassoo and a bottle of Jack to keep them on the right road.
A F Giles
